Building a brand takes both sides

Your personal trainer can’t get fit on your behalf.

You can pay for their expertise, get a programme and buy the shoes. At some point, you still have to exercise.

Building a brand asks for a similar commitment.

You bring in people to help you understand the problem, find a direction and develop the work. But they need your input. They need to know what happens inside the business, what customers keep asking and why the last attempt to change something went nowhere.

Some of the most useful things never make it into the brief. They come out in conversation, when someone questions an assumption or mentions something they thought was too obvious to share.

That conversation needs to continue beyond the first workshop. There are decisions to make, disagreements worth talking through and ideas that get better when both sides contribute.

We have a responsibility to make that exchange useful too. To ask good questions, listen to the answers and explain our thinking clearly enough for someone to challenge it.

A client who questions the work can make it better. So can a creative partner who questions the brief. That takes trust, time and a willingness on both sides to reconsider something they were sure about.

Otherwise, it’s a bit like seeing your trainer once a month to discuss why you’re still out of breath.

It’s worth looking at what happens between the sessions.